Quebec Competencies Chart - Elections and the Media

Description: This lesson helps students to reflect upon, understand and filter the many media messages within political platforms and around political personalities. Students begin by collecting, and then discussing and deconstructing, examples of campaign materials from a wide range of media. Understanding of the importance of the media in the political process is further developed through a series of activities, including the creation of a school-based election campaign.

Cross-curricular Competencies

Broad Areas of Learning

To use information

To solve problems

To exercise critical judgement

World View

Media Literacy

Citizenship and Community Life

This lesson satisfies the following English Language Arts Competencies from the Quebec Education Program:

Competency 1: To Read and Listen to Literary, Popular and Information-Based Texts

Essential Knowledges:

Uses prior knowledge and personal experience of the content of a text

Use of pictures and other graphic representations to interpret texts

Uses knowledge of the relationships between sounds and written symbols

Questions and talk with others to clarify and enrich interpretations

Makes connections to prior knowledge or to other texts

Uses different reading strategies according to the text type

Reads, listens to and views a range of self-selected and personally relevant texts that include:

Use of personal, social and cultural background and experiences to interpret texts

Develops a personal response process in the context of a community of readers through:

Discussion of responses with others individually, on small groups and in the whole class

Recount of the story and, with guidance, outline of information in a text

Development of opinions on literary or popular texts

Sharing of responses with others to clarify meaning and enrich interpretation

Comparing own responses with those of others at a beginner’s level

Discussing own response process at a beginner’s level

Moves beyond the initial response through:

Responses to texts in a variety of ways that include talking, writing, the Arts, Media

Early attempts to explain own views of a text

Support for own views with references to the text in small and large group discussions

Discussions of structures and features of text and their impact on the reader

Discussion of the structures and features of a text and their influence on the meaning of a text

Returning to a text to confirm interpretations and understandings in discussions with peers

Adjustment of own interpretations in the light of the responses of others at a beginner’s level

Sees a text as a construction through:

Suggestion of alternative endings or actions in a literary or popular text

Plausibility of events, characters, opinions and/or information in a text in relation to own values and experiences

Identification of some of the ways in which information is presented in popular and information-based texts

Understands the influence of familiar structures and features on the meaning of text through:

Identification of some structures and features of familiar text types

Begins to identify the view of the world presented in a text through:

Making of inferences, when prompted, about the view of the world presented by the text

Discussions, with guidance, of whose voices are heard and whose are missing in a text

Comparison, with guidance, of own values with some of the social, cultural and historical values in a literary text in teacher and peer discussions